A few weeks ago, Nathan Fillion mentioned that he’d buy the rights to the late, great, Firefly and start filming new episodes if he won the lottery. Subsequently, a few (hundred thousand) intrepid fans did their best to make that a reality, but www.helpnathanbuyfirefly.com has shut down after series creator Joss Whedon’s sister-in-law publicly denounced the site on Twitter.
Maurissa Tancharoen is also a writer for such Whedon projects as Dollhouse and Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. This week she became a footnote in the colorful history of Firefly as well: after buzz about the fan movement reached a fever pitch, she sent out this Twitter message:
Guys, no one in the Whedonverse is in support of www.helpnathanbuyfirefly.com. Please save your money!
Tancharoen later amended her statement with a longer message, stating that there were no hard feelings from the Whedon clan, but Joss and Co. weren’t comfortable with fans trying to take direct control of the Firefly rights, and even less with them collecting real money to do so. After the news broke, the organizers put a short message on Facebook announcing an official end to their efforts.
It should be noted that the site never took any collections, merely pledges. While they fell short of anything like the $300 million that Fillion first joked about, the pledges were still impressive. Roughly 12,000 fans pledged just over a million US dollars, with an average pledge of $85. ‘Help Nathan Buy Firefly’s Facebook page has 113,000 fans.
While I’d love to see Firefly on the air again as much as the next Browncoat, the movement had about a snowball’s chance in a Capissen 38 engine. Fox was never under any obligation to sell the rights to Firefly – legitimately or not – and on the off chance that they saw millions of dollars worth of fan interest, they’d be much more likely to try a ham-fisted reboot themselves. Then there’s commitments from the actors: Nathan Fillion, Morena Baccarin, Adam Baldwin and Summer Glau (nevermind) all have steady gigs on other shows, to say nothing of Whedon himself, who’s knee-deep in superheroes right now writing and directing The Avengers. Let’s face it: it’s coming up on ten years since the series was cancelled, and Serenity was a fitting, if bittersweet, end to the franchise.
It was fun while it lasted, folks. The ‘Help Nathan Buy Firefly’ organizers accomplished a lot in a short time, bringing a bunch of people some fanservice on Facebook and generating buzz for worthy projects like Child’s Play, Whedon’s equality charity Can’t Stop the Serenity and fan movie Browncoats: Redemption. If nothing else, this incident showed how deeply ‘the little TV show that couldn’t’ has embedded itself in the hearts and minds of geeks everywhere.
Don’t forget, Science Channel is currently rebroadcasting all fourteen episodes of Firefly Sunday nights at 10 PM – and Captain Mal himself seems to be dropping Firefly and Serenity references every other week on Castle.
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If they were to reboot the series I’d say that they should disregard Serenity all together, lets face it wasn’t really in the spirit of the show, Mal was too angry and rash, River more fragmented than when the show started, Simon was much more commanding than he should have been, Inara was seamed a lot more like the damsel in distress and Wash seamed much more childish. Also the ship itself just looked off, something to do with the coloring I think.So if they remake firefly I’d say to hell with the movie.
It makes me a very sad panda that the whedons disregard such a thing.
If I were to reboot it, it would be like Stargate or Star Trek, there is no NEED for some silly plot that it all leads to, just planets to visit, jobs to do etc etc, exactly like star trek or stargate….exploration in a sense… hell thats why I watched the series in the first place…not because of river.
I’d continue after the movie but find a way to bring back wash, beit as a cyborg or something, or maybe that he didnt actually “die” in the movie the others were just in a rush and thought so.
So much potential for this show to be a “grittier” star trek / stargate , makes me think of an old pc game called Privateer….good times…
PLEASE bring this back someway somehow in the future when all the actors are free to do so…..
I seam to recall a show called jehercio and about 50tons of nuts. So never say never. Just tune out fox and anyone who advertises on them and enough profits drop off. Or have every fan mail fox an empty box to siginfy the empty head who canceled the series. Imagine the cost to fox having to open each box.
Just finished watching the complete series of Firefly on DVD and I have to say I am gutted that they cancelled it. It is such a great program and people of all ages love it. I hope that more series will eventually be made, the sooner the better to be honest and I think it would be easy enough to do as well. The film Serenity was basically based before during and future so the future series will just have to carry on where season 1 left off and before the end of the film. Simple.
Firefly was and is a great show. In no way was it a waste or anything and I can’t think of a single ( legit) reason they would be iffy about starting it back up. Are they really that blind? They have enough fans out there if they asked they could build a rocket and fly to the moon them selves if they wanted! Maybe they won’t read this maybe they will continue being ignorant like many tend to be today but if they truly want to show they deserve all the caring fans out there the whedons WILL bring back firefly. They won’t just talk about it.talkings all very touching but it’s action that counts. It’s about time they took action.
Why not? It was a great show with great writing and acting.